Opening a New Data Center in Karachi

After having been in business of Managed Hosting for 12+ years, we have finally decided to open a data-center in Karachi. In about 10 days or so, we will officially be launching our Tier 2 (2 1/2 if I can say so) data center in Karachi. It is actually a Tier III equivalent facility, but Tier III requires raised flooring, which is a concept in itself that is now fading. Having said that, we are opening approximately 1,000 sq. feet of space initially (which would equate to about 30-34 racks), and will be expanding that to 4,000 sq. feet, spread out in various parts of the city for DR/BC purpose. The off-site locations will also be containing fully mirrored communication gear, and one specific location will be undisclosed where the data-vault would be housed.
Currently there is a lot of equipment by Arbor, Foundry, Cisco, HP, Dell, Sun, F5 Networks, APC, Barracuda, Juniper, Extreme, Alteon (Nortel), and many other vendors that is being implemented. About 75% of the equipment has been imported and installed, whilst the remaining 25% is slowing trickling in via air/sea or being customs cleared.

The unique thing about our data center is as follows:

o We are carrier neutral
o We have our own set of IPs (lots of them, so we can assign you dedicated IPs without that hefty price tag)
o We have-made/are-making arrangements by privately peering with many of the leading ISPs in Pakistan – so local access of the data will be immensely fast
o We offer fully managed servers and services – that is from hardware to parts, communication gear, switches, load-balancers, firewalls, etc. everything is offered from the inventory that is IN-STOCK
o We will be offering real-time data-backup facilities with 1+1 redundancy (on and off location)
o We have multiple redundant links with BGP running
o We are in the process of having multiple fiber routes installed
o We have exclusive transit arrangement with Limelight networks to transport content on to their CDN (Content Delivery Network)
o Hosting/Colocation is ALL that we do, so we do not compete – we compliment
o We are in the process of having completed relationship with Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, SAP and others to offer hosted solutions
o We are working with various software companies in Pakistan to offer SaaS (Software-As-A-Service) Model
o We plant to service clients from small web hosting (starting at Rs. 1,995/Year) to large clients who want to run Hosted Oracle Financial solutions. We provide all the hardware and take care of it.
o Our goal is simple – provide an SLA and latency guarantee.

A lot more is coming. I just wanted to ‘announce’ what we are launching. I shall be posting more details like pictures and services offering as the days progress.

11 thoughts on “Opening a New Data Center in Karachi”

Well I think there exists a tremendous opportunity to offer hosting services locally at a price that is local too. With the US$ spiraling out of control, it only makes logical sense that we have a ‘LayeredTech’ or “ThePlanet” equivalent in Pakistan, and this is our objective.

This is indeed good news. Hard to believe all what you are citing, but I will give you benefit of doubt. I really hope we can see more of such data-centers prop up in the country. Are any tours available?

HELLO FAISAL – GREAT NEWS YAAR. I HEARD FROM A FEW PEOPLES ABOUT YOUR NEW DATA CENTER. IT SEEMS YOU HAVE CONVERTED A ROOM OF YOUR OFFICE INTO A DATA CENTER – TRUE? I HEAD OFFICE OF NETXS WILL SLOWLY BE CONVERTED TO DATA CENTER ONLY? I REALLY WANT TO VISIT YOUR PLACE TO SEE. IRFAN BHAI GAVE ME YOUR REFERENCE (RACK-WALA IRFAN BHAI). PLEASE EMAIL ME.

Folks, thank you for your kind words. InshahAllah, when the data-center is ready, I will be posting pics. Although I am taking them as we develop, it would only do justice once the equipment is in place. Bilal, you are correct. Right now we have converted about 400 sq. feet into the data-center, The remaining space of approximately 800 sq. feet, would be be converted too.Tours would be open once we go live, any day now.

About Faisal Khan

Faisal Khan is a banking / payments consultant specializing in cross-border payment system and a digital money evangelist. He is the co-host of Around The Coin, a weekly podcast on Payments & Fintech with over 18,000+ listeners. Mr. Khan is a talent scout for Series A & B financing for various fintech VCs/funds. He is also a frequent contributor to popular Q&A site Quora where he has been a Quora 5 consecutive years. His official website is at https://faisalkhan.com